I Don't Believe Jesus Died To Save Me From My Sins
I don’t believe that Jesus died for my sins. And I don’t believe that he died to make me right with God. I don’t believe that his death made me one with God. I don’t believe there was ever a moment in my existence when I was separated from God. And I don’t think I need to ‘believe in him’ in order to get to heaven and avoid hell.
And yes, I know of John 3:16.
And I know the book of Romans and all the verses you’re Googling right now.
And although I’d love nothing more than to take the next 600,000 words to explain what I think about all of those verses (not really), one of the things people always ask me is, “well, if you don’t believe those things then what do you believe? Like, what is the point of Jesus and the cross and all the things if it isn’t to save us from our sins and get us into heaven?”
Good question.
I had a professor in seminary who once told me that you only understand a piece of “theology” as well as you are able to explain it to a child so that they understand what you’re talking about and can memorize the story for themselves and explain it back to you.
Hm.
If that’s true, it leads me to believe that 99% of the people filling up my Facebook feed with their theological rants really have no idea what on earth they’re talking about.
BUT.
ANYWAYS.
So I’ve taken it upon myself to explain what I believe about Jesus to my daughter (Jordan, who is 4) because I figure if I can’t explain to her what I believe about Jesus and the cross and all the things in such a way that she can recite it back to me … then I must not really understand it all that well myself.
Every night I lay with her in bed and we sing “Jesus Loves Me” (a special version that I created for her, perhaps I’ll share it sometime), we pray, and then she asks me to tell her what she calls, “the story of Jesus”.
And so, here it is …
“One day a long, long time ago God created everything.
The sun.
The moon.
The stars.
The earth.
The animals.
Bugs.
And PEOPLE.
And God created people so that they would be nice and kind and loving and helpful and caring and work together to make the world more and more like heaven.
And for a while they did that, but then …
But then.
… People started to be mean. They would fight and argue and steal from each other and the people who had ALL THE POWER were really mean to the people who had NO POWER AT ALL and when God saw that happening God said, “my goodness. What on earth is happening? I’ve gotta go and remind my people how to live!”
And so God came to live inside of Jesus and through Jesus showed us how to live:
How to love.
How to be kind.
How to forgive.
How to make peace.
How to share our power with others.
And lots of people liked that. They thought it was super cool and so they followed him everywhere that he went - they were called his disciples.
BUT.
Some people didn’t like it. They didn’t like it at all. They didn’t want to be kind or loving or share their power. They wanted to keep ALL THE POWER to themselves and didn’t really care much about anyone else. And so those people got together and said, “we’ve gotta figure out a way to get rid of Jesus. He’s messing up our lives. What will we do?”
They thought about it.
They talked about it.
And they made a plan - they got some nails and a hammer and a big wooden cross. They captured Jesus and they nailed his body to the cross. They put nails through his hands and his feet and blood poured out all over the place and he cried, he cried so hard because it hurt so badly. And then they lifted the cross in the air and they laughed at him.
They laughed at him.
They spit on him.
They threw things at him.
They made fun of him.
And then he died.
BUT.
Just before he died, the last thing he said was, “I FORGIVE YOU” and “I LOVE YOU” and you know what, Jordan? There is so much power packed into love and so much power packed into forgiveness that THREE DAYS LATER on Easter Sunday that love and forgiveness brought Jesus back to life. Jesus came back to life 3 days later and he came back to live inside of …
You.
And me.
And every single person in the whole world.
He came to live inside of us to remind us how to live - how to love, how to help, how to forgive, how to make peace, how to share our power, how to make the world more like heaven.
And although we get it right a lot of times, sometimes we get it wrong. And that’s OK. He’s right there with us to help us get back up again, to brush off our mistake. To learn and to move on. And the last thing he said to his disciples before he left to come and live inside of us was a promise - a promise to never ever leave us, to never leave us alone. He’s always here. Right inside of you. All around you. You are never, ever alone.”
And so, yeah - I don’t believe all that other stuff about Jesus. I find it incredibly boring and don’t really feel like it lines up very well with the Jesus I see in the Gospels. But if you pushed me to tell you what I do believe - that’s it. God didn’t sentence Jesus to die a bloody death because he was mad at my sin. Rather, we sentenced God (in Jesus) to die a bloody death because we didn’t like the all-inclusive life he showed us how to live.
God didn’t kill Jesus.
We killed God.
And God shouted forgiveness from the cross to his murderers who never even asked for his forgiveness.
And that forgiveness was packed with so much power that it created new life 3 days later that lives on to this very day in you, me, and everyone else.
Now, if you ask me - THAT’S some Good News.
Happy Easter, my friends. He is Risen - and the Christ lives inside of you, you are never ever alone.
✌️